


The Authorized Biography

by Elsinore_and_Inverness



Category: Discworld
Genre: Gen, a pile of headcanons, biography, ghost writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:53:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23914126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsinore_and_Inverness/pseuds/Elsinore_and_Inverness
Summary: Was anyone else struck by how snore-inducing the first line of Vetinari’s biography is?
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	The Authorized Biography

Ms. Sacharissa Cripslock was sort of hovering in wait. It was a skill that reporters seemed to have developed to agitate a good soundbite out of people.

Lord Vetinari finished slowly and carefully sharpening a pencil and looked up at her.

“I’m not sure I understand,” he said.

“People like you. You’re charismatic. Sort of a celebrity.”

“Like a Click star? That didn’t end well.”

“Yes... No. Sort of.”

“I thought that two months ago the general impression of public opinion was that I was ‘not a very nice man.’”

Sacharissa knew perfectly well that William de Worde’s concept of ‘public opinion’ was the breakfast table at Mrs. Arcanum’s boarding house, but nonetheless she said “You’d be surprised how many women of a certain age are sweet on you.”

“Only women of a certain age?” he asked, and Sacharissa caught the slight emphasis on the word _women_. 

“The point is there’d be a market if we published the book.”

“Not to sound... appallingly machinatious, but why would I be interested in doing this?”

“Influence over how you are perceived,” Sacharissa said, not missing a beat.

“Let’s see what you have.”

“It’s not... I’m not used to long form,” she handed over a sheet of writing. It included the phrase “City Boss opens up.”

“Hmm,” Vetinari twirled the pencil around his fingers. “You should put the year I was born and not my age, Miss Cripslock, hardcover books generally aren’t pulped within a season.”

“Where were you born?”

“Brindisi.”

“Oh! Is that why you never butter bread? You can get quite a nice expeller-pressed olive—“

“ _Hubwards_ Brindisi. I don’t put butter on bread because I am, according to my aunt, quote ‘a high-strung little thing.’”

“How old is your aunt?”

“Out of basic self-preservation, I must ask you to reconsider that question.”

“The Vetinaris run the bank, right?”

“The Wool Guild.”

“I was certain it was the bank.”

Vetinari smiled. “It’s a bit woolly.”

“Look, I can’t write down ‘the Vetinari family that runs the Brindisian Wool Guild that may or may not be the banking system and socio-politico-econo-culturo adminstration of the entire hubward Vetiterranean,’ and I don’t have the pages to give centuries of historical background. This is a human interest piece.”

“How about ‘Havelock Vetinari was born into a wealthy, influential family’?”

“That... works.” Sacharissa drew her pen across several lines of text. 

“What are we thinking about the ‘stateless orphan’ angle?”

“Let’s do it really badly,” Sacharissa said, thinking of William de Worde.

“Obvious spin?”

“Skid marks all over the tracks. Did you have tutors or a governess?”

“They let me attend the Guildhall school and sometimes I’d sit in the back of lecture halls at the university.”

“As a child?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“How about ‘his father, Lorens Vetinari, a patron of the arts, was generous in the matter of his education’?”

“You could even say ‘liberal.’”

“How were you stateless?”

“My father lost his citizenship after surviving an assassination attempt by the priests of Blind Io and starting a trade war with Genua.”

“I think I’m just going to use the trade war bit.”

“Lorens the Unfortunate drowned at sea after ignoring a curse that said ‘you’ll drown if you go to sea in Sektober.’”

“What about your mother?” Sacharissa asked.

“Let’s just say I could have killed King Felmet of Lancre.”

Sacharissa tried to remember her Hwel. She’d read the play in school. “She died in childbirth?”

“No.”

“Wait— Your father....”

“Yes.”

“Cool!” 

Vetinari sighed. “He found it extremely distressing and difficult to live through, but never once made me feel guilty about being born. I cannot allow you to sensationalize it.”

“Right. Sorry. Your other father?”

“A Morporkian. Drowned because his name was George.”

“What?”

“Quimby the Literal executed all Georges who weren’t farmers.”

“That’s horrible.”

“I can see this project of ‘doing it badly’ is cramping your journalistic instinct.”

Sacharissa looked at the Patrician. He mostly looked tired. She had also lost her parents quite young. “How about ‘his parents died four years apart as a result of political intrigue in Brindisi and the Sto Plains’?”

Vetinari nodded. “Then I learned to talk to alligators.”

Sacharissa looked at the clock. It was going to be a long night. 

She understood why Vetinari wanted her to make his life look unremarkable, but the man had grown up in two guild halls and a house of negotiable affection, played a key role in an international campaign for sex workers’ rights, abolished the entire prison system except for the Tanty and worked relentlessly for diversity in the city. She was also fairly certain that he had been trained as a witch. But if the people he had to deal with every day saw that all written down close together he wouldn’t stand a chance. He also didn’t want her to explicate any of the assassination attempts prior to the founding of the Times. People might realize both how badly they were carried out and how close they came to succeeding. 

She felt a twinge of protectiveness toward the Patrician. If she could find a way to convey that in the book without, say, any of the actual content of his life, she might have accomplished something. Although it might just mean more people who ran boarding houses writing effusive letters and Charlie being invited to more children’s parties.


End file.
